When the cloud is ready to burst, or when the fault line has been developing pressure and is ready to shift, the changes happen quickly. Accumulated energy can be kept in check only so long. As the two sides of the fault line strain in opposition, we can pinch the boulders together and try to hold back the earthquake, but it will not be denied indefinitely. When it lets go, all hell breaks loose as though it only just happened this very moment. Not so. It has been happening for a very long time.
There is a series of gradual collapses. Each one a revelation and an invitation to grow and change. Each one is also an invitation to denial and avoidance. Maybe there is a fight, or an outside stressor, or the straw that makes the camel really lose their shit. Again. Then there is soothing. Apology. Retreat. Negotiation. The cycle begins again.
Then one day, Krakatoa is not content to huff and puff, but needs to explode and sink beneath the waves. There is an orgasm of destruction. Finality.
That day came for me this summer. After so many rehearsals, it was show time. I had extreme stage fright that was only overcome by the Krakatoan energy of the day. Shaking mad. Grief stricken. Aware. After a long sleepless night, I said what I had to say. What I had not been able to say previously. I walked away afterward, feeling the death and the liberation.
The unsticking was sudden and I am not the same. I've done things that I never could have seen myself doing. I've scarred myself and others. Smoke and leaning timbers. Craters. Hurts that will last a life time. Absence. Loss. A mountain gone. How can a mountain just be gone?
There's also the cloudburst. One morning in early August, I woke up a changed person. Sweetness, joy. Rain inside me. A warm deluge of relief, sadness, exuberance, awareness that we aren't destined to stay stuck even if it's messy, sharp certainty of big change where there had only been vague dread of things staying in the same stagnant swamp forever.
The cloudburst makes things turn green and move toward the sun. It feels very good to be alive.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Walking the Ridgepole
Anne Shirley didn't make it across, probably because either she let the pressure of the dare distract her, or because L.M. Montgomery needed the precocious redhead to wise up and stop exhausting everyone with her hyjinx for a little while, or because the plot needed an exciting event to drive the next chapter.
Anne was trying to walk across the ridgepole of her friend's shed and took a tumble.
The last few days when I've not been working aboard Close Enough, I've been fixing and painting the outside of my house. It costs next to nothing and helps ease that feeling that I'm just backsliding on everything and running the old place into the ground. All my front windows and doors are now filled, sealed and brilliant white instead of looking abandoned.
The most challenging project was to fix up my chimney enclosure. That was a choice between ripping the whole business off and rebuilding- not an option due to money and time constraints- or rehabilitation of what's already there. The problem was that the chimney was finished in something one slight degree more durable than corrugated cardboard. Not very rugged or weatherproof, and boy after 8 or 10 years, the thing looked pretty sorry.
Getting back and forth required climbing up two ladders and traversing the ridge line. At first I crawled and frog-hopped my way across, occasionally being sharply aware of how hot a roof can get on a July afternoon. Since my shoes were much better suited to such contact than my inner thighs, I tried walking across the ridge pole. Gradually it became routine and much more comfortable.
The inner resistance was not actually fear, but entrenched expectations. Fictional redheaded youths are not supposed to walk ridgepoles, much less a 49 year old carrying a bucket of paint, a mortgage and responsibility for 3 kids.
6 months ago I would not have discovered how good my balance is because I was mentally stuck.
Embedded and hence invisible doubts are hard to get past. Unless you're burning your legs on searing hot asphalt, and instead choose to concentrate and enjoy the adventure of the ridgepole walk.
Anne was trying to walk across the ridgepole of her friend's shed and took a tumble.
The last few days when I've not been working aboard Close Enough, I've been fixing and painting the outside of my house. It costs next to nothing and helps ease that feeling that I'm just backsliding on everything and running the old place into the ground. All my front windows and doors are now filled, sealed and brilliant white instead of looking abandoned.
The most challenging project was to fix up my chimney enclosure. That was a choice between ripping the whole business off and rebuilding- not an option due to money and time constraints- or rehabilitation of what's already there. The problem was that the chimney was finished in something one slight degree more durable than corrugated cardboard. Not very rugged or weatherproof, and boy after 8 or 10 years, the thing looked pretty sorry.
Getting back and forth required climbing up two ladders and traversing the ridge line. At first I crawled and frog-hopped my way across, occasionally being sharply aware of how hot a roof can get on a July afternoon. Since my shoes were much better suited to such contact than my inner thighs, I tried walking across the ridge pole. Gradually it became routine and much more comfortable.
The inner resistance was not actually fear, but entrenched expectations. Fictional redheaded youths are not supposed to walk ridgepoles, much less a 49 year old carrying a bucket of paint, a mortgage and responsibility for 3 kids.
6 months ago I would not have discovered how good my balance is because I was mentally stuck.
Embedded and hence invisible doubts are hard to get past. Unless you're burning your legs on searing hot asphalt, and instead choose to concentrate and enjoy the adventure of the ridgepole walk.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Here I Am
Two days ago, my law degree took me to a different place than I could possibly have foreseen in school. It was a storage area inside the Matinicus Town Office. As many hours as I'd put in at the office, this space was a place I'd never ventured in before.
The building previously served as the island's one room school. I found myself moving old doors, lumber and some broken chair pieces to get at books. Not just any books. Books of about 2 feet by 3 feet containing elegantly handwritten records of property taxes.
My mission was to try and figure out what happened to approximately half the shares in 22 acres of shorefront and beach property here on the island. There is litigation among some of the other owners. Matinicus has three areas where shore and harbor property is owned in shares rather than physical boundaries. These shares have been passed down and subdivided from the original European settlers of the island. Ownership gets convoluted. One parcel is expressed at something like 57/90th's of 250/450th's.
I am uniquely privileged to be using my law degree this way.
Two days later, after some early morning negotiation on a case, I'm standing at the south end of the island, listening to bird gossip, placid surf and the southwest breeze through the grass. Three monarch butterflies stand in the milkweed.
As much hell as I've been through, or put myself and family through, I am recognizing how special my situation is. I had it as a zero sum game in my mind- if I get this out-of-the-box lifestyle, I have to endure financial chaos and suffering. Not so.
Popping the bubble of the zero sum game, the self-limitations, the self-punishment is a good thing. Somewhere along the way, without intending or seeing it at the time, I broke out of the shell. The shell was that of mid level civil servant afraid of my shadow, unable to be myself, weak, unfulfilled. Now I captain a boat, have a fascinating slate of cases and can finally start to deal with the financial piece. I am not unusually intelligent, good looking, rich or courageous. I just am here. I like it.
The building previously served as the island's one room school. I found myself moving old doors, lumber and some broken chair pieces to get at books. Not just any books. Books of about 2 feet by 3 feet containing elegantly handwritten records of property taxes.
My mission was to try and figure out what happened to approximately half the shares in 22 acres of shorefront and beach property here on the island. There is litigation among some of the other owners. Matinicus has three areas where shore and harbor property is owned in shares rather than physical boundaries. These shares have been passed down and subdivided from the original European settlers of the island. Ownership gets convoluted. One parcel is expressed at something like 57/90th's of 250/450th's.
I am uniquely privileged to be using my law degree this way.
Two days later, after some early morning negotiation on a case, I'm standing at the south end of the island, listening to bird gossip, placid surf and the southwest breeze through the grass. Three monarch butterflies stand in the milkweed.
As much hell as I've been through, or put myself and family through, I am recognizing how special my situation is. I had it as a zero sum game in my mind- if I get this out-of-the-box lifestyle, I have to endure financial chaos and suffering. Not so.
Popping the bubble of the zero sum game, the self-limitations, the self-punishment is a good thing. Somewhere along the way, without intending or seeing it at the time, I broke out of the shell. The shell was that of mid level civil servant afraid of my shadow, unable to be myself, weak, unfulfilled. Now I captain a boat, have a fascinating slate of cases and can finally start to deal with the financial piece. I am not unusually intelligent, good looking, rich or courageous. I just am here. I like it.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Stained Glass Window Moments
Through the hardest times I've experienced, in the midst of chaotic avalanches of financial and personal collapse, there have been cracks in the cold stone wall of misery. Important cracks. Empty moments of light and pointless relief and happiness. Certainty about who I am and what I'm doing. Dazzlement at the ocean and gratitude that I work there.
One morning started particularly wretchedly. The weather on that dazzling ocean where I work on this day was cold, windy and rainy. Then the oil leak in the boat turned into a gusher, surrounding Close Enough with a giant oil slick. I envisioned calling the bank and telling them where the boat was and that the keys were in it. I envisioned being many thousands further into the hole at a time when I'm broke, inexperienced and desperate.
I limped into the harbor, had help locating the engine problem, called for a part and surrendered to several days of down time when I absolutely could not afford it.
Later, I sat in a meeting and was given a piece of paying work. I then took a torn in half piece of scrap paper and wrote down a list of these kinds of projects I'd had come in recently and very much by coincidence. The sun came in through the stained glass window in my soul as I realized that rotten weather and boat down time had suddenly transformed into several very productive days laid out before me.
It took a long couple of months to get used to living alone or as a single parent, to get the house back to something liveable instead of a cold, dirty bunch of sockets where belongings and family had been. Money troubles accelerated instead of abating as I had hoped. I was very lonely. I felt ashamed.
After spending this past week reeling from the latest financial body shocks, coming up with a plan and beginning to execute, after three strenuous days on the boat, after an early morning of finances and health care coverage bureaucracy, I stopped and listened and absorbed another stained glass window moment. My son and his friend were quietly playing on the back deck. We'd just gotten back from the harbor where they mucked about in the skiff and played in the water. My middle girl is off with a friend. Summer is here. I'm getting back into activities with the kids where they can enjoy and be enriched by this unique environment. I take my daughter's friend and her Dad on a ride aboard Close Enough and see the big grins that remind me why I'm here.
I haven't scored the big financial prize or fixed all the leaks in my personal ship of state. I have had a few moments where the light shines in and reassures and relieves. To me that is just as much of a prize. Those moments aren't just here and gone. They stay with me.
One morning started particularly wretchedly. The weather on that dazzling ocean where I work on this day was cold, windy and rainy. Then the oil leak in the boat turned into a gusher, surrounding Close Enough with a giant oil slick. I envisioned calling the bank and telling them where the boat was and that the keys were in it. I envisioned being many thousands further into the hole at a time when I'm broke, inexperienced and desperate.
I limped into the harbor, had help locating the engine problem, called for a part and surrendered to several days of down time when I absolutely could not afford it.
Later, I sat in a meeting and was given a piece of paying work. I then took a torn in half piece of scrap paper and wrote down a list of these kinds of projects I'd had come in recently and very much by coincidence. The sun came in through the stained glass window in my soul as I realized that rotten weather and boat down time had suddenly transformed into several very productive days laid out before me.
It took a long couple of months to get used to living alone or as a single parent, to get the house back to something liveable instead of a cold, dirty bunch of sockets where belongings and family had been. Money troubles accelerated instead of abating as I had hoped. I was very lonely. I felt ashamed.
After spending this past week reeling from the latest financial body shocks, coming up with a plan and beginning to execute, after three strenuous days on the boat, after an early morning of finances and health care coverage bureaucracy, I stopped and listened and absorbed another stained glass window moment. My son and his friend were quietly playing on the back deck. We'd just gotten back from the harbor where they mucked about in the skiff and played in the water. My middle girl is off with a friend. Summer is here. I'm getting back into activities with the kids where they can enjoy and be enriched by this unique environment. I take my daughter's friend and her Dad on a ride aboard Close Enough and see the big grins that remind me why I'm here.
I haven't scored the big financial prize or fixed all the leaks in my personal ship of state. I have had a few moments where the light shines in and reassures and relieves. To me that is just as much of a prize. Those moments aren't just here and gone. They stay with me.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Why My Life is Cool As-Is
It's foggy today and yesterday I finished a three day hauling cycle aboard the Close Enough. My body rests and I shift to freelance legal work. After a few hours on phone and computer, I hop on my bike, pick up mail and, for an exercise break, ride down to the town dock to watch the ferry arrive and say some hellos. My mail is tucked in the front carrier I made out of a bait bag and trap hoop.
With all the fear and personal uncertainty, the lonesome hours, the financial pressure, getting on the bike is, again, a liberation. Leg muscles go. Fog flies by. Life is groovy.
Update at lunch time: I am having crabmeat I caught, rhubarb my kids harvested in the yard, red kelp from the boat and eggs from North Haven. Only thing from far away is the kale.
With all the fear and personal uncertainty, the lonesome hours, the financial pressure, getting on the bike is, again, a liberation. Leg muscles go. Fog flies by. Life is groovy.
Update at lunch time: I am having crabmeat I caught, rhubarb my kids harvested in the yard, red kelp from the boat and eggs from North Haven. Only thing from far away is the kale.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Good Days
There cannot be anything sweeter than apple blossoms on an old tree in a back yard with Penobscot Bay surf in the distance and kid laughter closer by. 3 consecutive days of blissful weather here on the island have brought productive time on the boat, and rest and rejuvenation with my two younger kids. It was magical to see this place through their eyes with its hiding places, giant elephant ear rhubarb leaves, hammock, green grass and soft early summer air. Our future here is precarious. Our present is magic.
Then today I get a little sniff of what the money may be like when the lobsters show up. It is flat calm with dazzling sunshine. I'm running the boat, hauling gear, making all the moves more fluidly, doing things that are still new in that I didn't start doing this when I was 14, yet the work settles in a little every day.
Yep. Still stuck. Financial realities are painful to confront. Not sure what I'll be doing or where I'll be living in the longer term, but today, I am a fisherman, and it is good. There is even a respectable paycheck.
Then today I get a little sniff of what the money may be like when the lobsters show up. It is flat calm with dazzling sunshine. I'm running the boat, hauling gear, making all the moves more fluidly, doing things that are still new in that I didn't start doing this when I was 14, yet the work settles in a little every day.
Yep. Still stuck. Financial realities are painful to confront. Not sure what I'll be doing or where I'll be living in the longer term, but today, I am a fisherman, and it is good. There is even a respectable paycheck.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Saturday at 4:45 AM, Persistence
It's just before 5:00 a.m. on Saturday, May 12. It's blowing 21 knots gusting to 22 with a small craft advisory for hazardous seas, too windy to safely go out alone and haul my traps. It was going to take all my courage to head out today anyway with the catches being so pathetic, and conditions less than ideal. Now I have to come up with a different plan and not panic about losing a hauling day.
I am desperately missing my family. I will focus on the joy of seeing my children later today and watching my daughter's stage debut in a play on the other island.
I get up early every day, work hard, adapt and embrace change. It feels impossible right now, but as distraught as I am, I have to trust that my drive and the world's generosity will line up and I will recognize that moment.
Update- Feeling just enough motivation and guilt to drive to the harbor, bringing my lunch and clothes for the day, I drive down, pausing at the crest for a look at the sea. The view is not what I expect. It looks perfectly fine, no white caps, no geisers where swell meets ledge. From the wharf I see Charlie and Ellen heading out. They give me the courage the hazardous seas advisory tried to sap out of me.
Once out on the boat, I perplexingly have a sunny day at work on the water. And the catch is up.
One of the many self help resources I've listened to talks about how successful people are serial failers who don't take the hint. It's about persistence. It's about all I have that works. Sometimes. Like today.
I am desperately missing my family. I will focus on the joy of seeing my children later today and watching my daughter's stage debut in a play on the other island.
I get up early every day, work hard, adapt and embrace change. It feels impossible right now, but as distraught as I am, I have to trust that my drive and the world's generosity will line up and I will recognize that moment.
Update- Feeling just enough motivation and guilt to drive to the harbor, bringing my lunch and clothes for the day, I drive down, pausing at the crest for a look at the sea. The view is not what I expect. It looks perfectly fine, no white caps, no geisers where swell meets ledge. From the wharf I see Charlie and Ellen heading out. They give me the courage the hazardous seas advisory tried to sap out of me.
Once out on the boat, I perplexingly have a sunny day at work on the water. And the catch is up.
One of the many self help resources I've listened to talks about how successful people are serial failers who don't take the hint. It's about persistence. It's about all I have that works. Sometimes. Like today.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Microwave Popcorn is Evil
I wrote these things as I was readying myself to leave a secure, decent paying job with benefits. I was not doing well in that situation either and needed to make a change. At the time, my wife and I were ready for a new adventure. For me it was then or probably never. The fence becomes invisible eventually, and that's where I was headed.
March 1, 2006
Microwave popcorn represents the smell of cubicle culture. I will never eat it again. The fragrance is artificial, chemicalized, the perfect symbol of a working life disjointed from nature, joy and freedom. The smell of confinement, frustration and the dehumanizing infantilizing effects of too much job security. It is the smell of quiet, polite misery, of death marching forward while life is pushed aside. A factory-pressed trick of the nose, not eliciting the cornfield or the butter churn, but an imposter with a crooked acrylic mustache coming detached on one side.
I’m in my last hour of employment. Joyful, giddy, tired and flat as at a memorial service. Tired with no physical cause. I would not want to work somewhere a long time and leave. It’s actually very hard, even though I’ve been anxious to go. I signed my termination form yesterday. Not that comfortable with the choice of words. My ass wants to be kicked rather than coddled in this polyester chair. I say that now from the ass-coddling comfort of the chair. We’ll see.
It’s a fool proof scheme, and I’ll be the fool to prove it. The audacity of taking on something that is soul-felt, but otherwise unknown. It makes magic come up close enough to touch and smell. For this, I’m someone I would admire.
How that's changed, depending on when I ask myself. Overall, I'm glad I took a huge leap. Sometimes, I'm thoroughly convinced it was very much the wrong thing.
February 4, 2006.
5:36 in yellow green numbers, hanging in darkness. Not looking connected to anything. Kind of how I feel. I have no job on the island. We have no house on the island. We have no way of getting our stuff to the island. We have no money to pay for moving to the island. In the green number-hanging darkness, I’m certain we’re going to the island.
Messy life change and adventure when you’re not ready. When you’re in a phase of life that seems to be all about making sure your kids are safe and stable and fed.
Change for its own sake after all the justifications. After all the talk, it’s because I Want It. I tell myself risk is good, change is good, growth is good. We talk for hours about the benefits and challenges, the means, the obstacles. Fear comes arm-in-arm with excitement. Lots of important emotional and spiritual points get made. The kids will always remember it. We’ll never regret it. Actually, it’s really because I Want It.
***
“Job Security” means disempowerment, infantilization, donuts, too much screen time. Sitting. Hunching. Cowering. Dissipation. Pettiness raised to Martha Stewart-esque attention to detail. Pharmaceutical companies must absolutely love state government employees. Diet companies. Junk food producers. Magazine publishers. Our break room table featured three consecutive monthly editions of a women’s magazine. All three cover stories were about weight loss. Crumbs in the pages and a grease spot on the back.
And so it began on early 2006. Getting unstuck from a stagnating situation, out of one frying pan and into an eventually scorching hot fire. From too much safety and boredom to financial kamikazi-ism and one of the most dangerous, financially unpredictable jobs in the U.S.. From death by sitting to 24 x 7 financial and physical peril.
Now what?
March 1, 2006
Microwave popcorn represents the smell of cubicle culture. I will never eat it again. The fragrance is artificial, chemicalized, the perfect symbol of a working life disjointed from nature, joy and freedom. The smell of confinement, frustration and the dehumanizing infantilizing effects of too much job security. It is the smell of quiet, polite misery, of death marching forward while life is pushed aside. A factory-pressed trick of the nose, not eliciting the cornfield or the butter churn, but an imposter with a crooked acrylic mustache coming detached on one side.
I’m in my last hour of employment. Joyful, giddy, tired and flat as at a memorial service. Tired with no physical cause. I would not want to work somewhere a long time and leave. It’s actually very hard, even though I’ve been anxious to go. I signed my termination form yesterday. Not that comfortable with the choice of words. My ass wants to be kicked rather than coddled in this polyester chair. I say that now from the ass-coddling comfort of the chair. We’ll see.
It’s a fool proof scheme, and I’ll be the fool to prove it. The audacity of taking on something that is soul-felt, but otherwise unknown. It makes magic come up close enough to touch and smell. For this, I’m someone I would admire.
How that's changed, depending on when I ask myself. Overall, I'm glad I took a huge leap. Sometimes, I'm thoroughly convinced it was very much the wrong thing.
February 4, 2006.
5:36 in yellow green numbers, hanging in darkness. Not looking connected to anything. Kind of how I feel. I have no job on the island. We have no house on the island. We have no way of getting our stuff to the island. We have no money to pay for moving to the island. In the green number-hanging darkness, I’m certain we’re going to the island.
Messy life change and adventure when you’re not ready. When you’re in a phase of life that seems to be all about making sure your kids are safe and stable and fed.
Change for its own sake after all the justifications. After all the talk, it’s because I Want It. I tell myself risk is good, change is good, growth is good. We talk for hours about the benefits and challenges, the means, the obstacles. Fear comes arm-in-arm with excitement. Lots of important emotional and spiritual points get made. The kids will always remember it. We’ll never regret it. Actually, it’s really because I Want It.
***
“Job Security” means disempowerment, infantilization, donuts, too much screen time. Sitting. Hunching. Cowering. Dissipation. Pettiness raised to Martha Stewart-esque attention to detail. Pharmaceutical companies must absolutely love state government employees. Diet companies. Junk food producers. Magazine publishers. Our break room table featured three consecutive monthly editions of a women’s magazine. All three cover stories were about weight loss. Crumbs in the pages and a grease spot on the back.
And so it began on early 2006. Getting unstuck from a stagnating situation, out of one frying pan and into an eventually scorching hot fire. From too much safety and boredom to financial kamikazi-ism and one of the most dangerous, financially unpredictable jobs in the U.S.. From death by sitting to 24 x 7 financial and physical peril.
Now what?
Just Pedal
This is the story of me getting unstuck. Getting on the
bike and pedalling, but also laying in the grass and being. Not either
giving up on life or pretending problems aren't real, not becoming the
loser despite many invitations to see myself that way. Also not flogging
myself or working constantly to the breaking point.
I am very, very stuck. I have great deluges of tears daily about money problems, relationships on the verge of annihilation or reincarnation, self loathing. I am nearly 50, in utter financial chaos for several years. I have a law license, a commercial lobstering license, an Ed Tech III certificate and many other reasons to succeed. I'm not a drug or gambling or shopping addict and yet I have failed financially and career-wise.
There is an enormous divide between my deep sense of self worth and my external circumstances. I am failing. At everything. And busting my ass in the process. If I'm going to suck this bad, don't I at least get to sit on the couch in sweatpants and really work that role? I am in very good physical and intellectual condition. I take good care of myself. I love myself. Why then, is everything going so terribly wrong? I need more money, yes. I need to pay my bills. That is in my character. I am unable to do so right now and it hurts every single minute of every day. My character and worth are reflected in the world as an absent, exhausted father and past due notices, deadbeat happy-grams.
As I had left my children on another island with their mother yesterday, I had an hour and a half boatride to think about and cry about my situation. I have responded to stress by making lists of tasks to get me out of whatever set of problems there was at the time. Strange thing is, as good as I am at the list organizing and the execution of the listed tasks, I am still frantic, depressed and feeling desperate. Seems like maybe such list making is not helping.
Then I get on the bicycle and for no reason at all, the overload, panic and desperation aren't any more. I'm a 10 year old boy. It's school vacation. I'm just riding. I head down South Road past the one room school, the former one room school and now town office, the fishing workshop with the stereo early-summer loud, the engine block that's been dragged to the road for recycling, to the harbor road, past Wanda working on her flower garden, up the crest and down the hill to shingled shops of the harbor. As bad as everything has become- money, marriage, separation from children, feeling like an idiot learning the lobster fishing business, disconnection notices, overdue mortgage payment- all of it eases when I jump on a bicycle and pedal down these twisting dirt roads surrounded by sea.
I ache terribly for my family. I am fearful for our desperate financial situation. I'm coping by deep cleaning the house, going through years of debris, selecting and saving the special things and sorting and disposing of all the clutter generated by years of being busy with three kids and nineteen jobs between Lisa and myself. It feels good to find special bits of art, writing, photos and know that now these things are not lost to the mounds of crap.
Since I'm alone, I'm also using the time to start to quantify and make financial discipline plans. The monster is smaller when I open the envelopes and write down the numbers and dates.
Still ache for family. For this reason, the phone company bill is going to be a priority.
On today's list is to write the story of my comeback as a way on visualizing and writing my own good story.
Probably ought to start with how I got stuck. Funny thing is, I got stuck in this situation by getting unstuck from another.
Next: Microwave Popcorn is an Evil, Life Draining Thing.
I am very, very stuck. I have great deluges of tears daily about money problems, relationships on the verge of annihilation or reincarnation, self loathing. I am nearly 50, in utter financial chaos for several years. I have a law license, a commercial lobstering license, an Ed Tech III certificate and many other reasons to succeed. I'm not a drug or gambling or shopping addict and yet I have failed financially and career-wise.
There is an enormous divide between my deep sense of self worth and my external circumstances. I am failing. At everything. And busting my ass in the process. If I'm going to suck this bad, don't I at least get to sit on the couch in sweatpants and really work that role? I am in very good physical and intellectual condition. I take good care of myself. I love myself. Why then, is everything going so terribly wrong? I need more money, yes. I need to pay my bills. That is in my character. I am unable to do so right now and it hurts every single minute of every day. My character and worth are reflected in the world as an absent, exhausted father and past due notices, deadbeat happy-grams.
As I had left my children on another island with their mother yesterday, I had an hour and a half boatride to think about and cry about my situation. I have responded to stress by making lists of tasks to get me out of whatever set of problems there was at the time. Strange thing is, as good as I am at the list organizing and the execution of the listed tasks, I am still frantic, depressed and feeling desperate. Seems like maybe such list making is not helping.
Then I get on the bicycle and for no reason at all, the overload, panic and desperation aren't any more. I'm a 10 year old boy. It's school vacation. I'm just riding. I head down South Road past the one room school, the former one room school and now town office, the fishing workshop with the stereo early-summer loud, the engine block that's been dragged to the road for recycling, to the harbor road, past Wanda working on her flower garden, up the crest and down the hill to shingled shops of the harbor. As bad as everything has become- money, marriage, separation from children, feeling like an idiot learning the lobster fishing business, disconnection notices, overdue mortgage payment- all of it eases when I jump on a bicycle and pedal down these twisting dirt roads surrounded by sea.
I ache terribly for my family. I am fearful for our desperate financial situation. I'm coping by deep cleaning the house, going through years of debris, selecting and saving the special things and sorting and disposing of all the clutter generated by years of being busy with three kids and nineteen jobs between Lisa and myself. It feels good to find special bits of art, writing, photos and know that now these things are not lost to the mounds of crap.
Since I'm alone, I'm also using the time to start to quantify and make financial discipline plans. The monster is smaller when I open the envelopes and write down the numbers and dates.
Still ache for family. For this reason, the phone company bill is going to be a priority.
On today's list is to write the story of my comeback as a way on visualizing and writing my own good story.
Probably ought to start with how I got stuck. Funny thing is, I got stuck in this situation by getting unstuck from another.
Next: Microwave Popcorn is an Evil, Life Draining Thing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)